With the infiltration and expansion of electrical information technology in every technical field multilayer ceramic capacitors (hereinafter MLCC), as an important electronic component, is developing as rapidly as large-scale integrated circuits. Today's MLCC technology has trends towards: miniaturized capacitors, large-capacitance low-voltage capacitors, chip capacitors, high-voltage series capacitors, and capacitors with base-metal internal electrodes. In particular, large-scale applications of nickel-electrode MLCC are most prominent. Nickel-electrode MLCC is mainly characterized in that: 1) nickel electrodes are less expensive; 2) electromigration rate of nickel atoms or radicals is slower than that of palladium-silver radicals thereby having better electrochemical stability; 3) nickel electrodes have high corrosion resistance and heat resistance to welding flux, thus having reliable processing stability; and 4) lower equivalent series resistance and better impedance-frequency properties.
In regards to high-frequency and low-dielectric-constant MLCCs (with dielectric constants less than 15), palladium-silver-based systems are still prevailing both in China and overseas. Chinese patent application 200310117638.5 discloses a high-frequency and low-dielectric-constant thermostable ceramic dielectric material and MLCC using same. The invented ceramic dielectric material consists of main crystalline phases and auxiliary components, wherein the main crystalline phases are Mg(1−X)ZnxTiO3 (0.00010.05≦X≦0.05) and Mg(2−y)ZnySiO4 (0.0001≦X≦0.05), and the auxiliary components include one or more of ZnO, Al2O3, SrO, B2O3, Nd2O3, MnO2, Co3O4, K2O, Fe2O3, CeO2 and SnO. The dielectric constant of the MLCC is in a range of 10˜20, which exhibits high frequency characteristics and good dielectric properties. However, the production cost of MLCC based on this method is fairly high because of the use of Ag—Pd internal electrodes.